Slocum's Silver Burden (17 page)

“They're getting away,” Slocum said. “Listen. The reports are dying down. That means your men have to get after them.”

“Might mean Squinty shot 'em. Best damned sharpshooter I ever did see, in spite of his name. Blind in one eye.”

“The specials . . .” Tamara let her sentence trail off so Underwood could finish it.

“All right, you two. Mount up. We'll see how the fight's goin'.” Don't take it into your heads to run.”

“I want to see the silver,” Tamara said wistfully.

Slocum and Tamara rode ahead of Underwood, aware of the shotgun aimed at their backs. They came to the edge of the trail inching around the side of the mountain. The rocky ledge had fallen down into the river below in places, making a direct assault on the two specials difficult.

“See what we're up against, boss?” The man peered up at Underwood, one eye screwed shut. “No way I kin get a good shot at either of 'em.”

“How many places has that there rocky ledge collapsed?”

“Well, now, boss, when they led that packhorse of theirs across at least two sections, the trail done fell out from under its hooves.”

“The horse,” Tamara asked anxiously, “was it lost?”

“Think it was,” Squinty said. “That mean there's no reason to keep after 'em?”

“I don't care if the silver's gone over the ledge,” Underwood said. “I want them two owlhoots brought in.”

“They're on the trail back around the end of this mountain,” Squinty said. “We got to move on 'em fast.”

“All right, Slocum,” Underwood said. “You want to be a hero?”

Slocum took out his six-shooter, made sure he carried six loaded cylinders, and then kicked free to drop to the ground.

“He's using you, John. You'll get yourself killed.”

“'Less I miss my guess, this ain't the first time Slocum's been ordered to do something like this,” Underwood said.

“I'll be all right,” Slocum said.

He wasn't sure if he reassured Tamara or threw it up into Underwood's face. Staying low, he worked to the trail and then to the first place where the trail had caved in. Cautiously looking over the edge, he saw a bloody smear on the rocks a dozen feet below, where the packhorse had hit first. The red trail extended another fifty feet down to the river. All along the cliff face he saw bright silver glints. The horse had died and in its death fall had scattered silver bars to the bottom of the ravine.

Facing the rock, he gathered his strength and launched himself across the three-foot break in the trail. He hit, caught himself, and worked farther along, hugging the stone to keep from becoming a target.

He fired off a round when he saw a hand with a six-gun poking out from around a rock. His bullet flew true, but the hand holding the gun only jerked with the impact. Slocum worked his way closer, knelt, and plucked the gun from nerveless fingers. A quick look showed that Harry no longer presented a threat. Slocum stepped past, not bothering to see how many slugs had taken the man's life. If Squinty was as a good a sniper as Underwood said, one bullet was all it took.

“Riley!” He shouted to the special to find where he was. “Your partner's dead. You will be, too, unless you give up.”

His answer came in wild shots that sang off into the emptiness over the ravine. Riley fired wildly. Slocum listened hard but didn't hear a horse protesting the noise.

“You still have a horse to ride? The silver's lost. It's all in the river now.”

This time not even gunfire came as a response. Slocum worked his way closer, found a bend in the trail, and whirled about, ready to shoot. There was no reason. Riley slumped against the rock face, six-shooter in his dead hand. Slocum looked over the edge of the cliff and caught his breath. At least one more horse had taken the plunge. The third horse was nowhere to be seen. It might have joined the other two in death after falling over the edge.

The specials were dead. And the silver they'd carried was lost.

“I got another one,” Gus called from a dozen feet down the face of the cliff. He held up a silver bar.

“Damned fool,” muttered Squinty.

“You want to join the other two down there?” Underwood asked sharply.

“Hell, boss, I can't see fer shit. Ain't got any sense of how far things are.”

Slocum marveled that Squinty was a good shot but had no way of telling how far something was.

“If it's touchin' your fingertips, you know where it is. You know the feel of silver. I've seen you roll silver dollars around 'twixt your fingers like they was turned to liquid.”

“What are you gonna do 'bout them?” Squinty said, directing Underwood's attention back to Slocum and Tamara.

“That's a question. Slocum helped out, but he let the silver get tossed into a river. It'll take the better part of a week and a couple dozen men fishin' it all out.”

“You'll get it back eventually,” Tamara said. “We had nothing to do with Harry and Riley killing Baldy or stealing the railroad's shipment.”

“You reckon what's down below is all the missing silver?” Underwood watched Slocum closely.

With a poker face and exerting every bit of control he had, Slocum said, “Yes.” He left it at that. It never paid to add to a lie. Some detail always tripped up the man trying to embellish what he knew wasn't the truth.

“You agree?” Underwood trained his keen look on Tamara, who seconded Slocum's opinion. “Then there's not much more we can do here but wait for a train to take us back to the Oakland depot.”

“That'll be longer than a day,” Tamara said. “Two trains going to San Francisco in the same day means the next one, maybe two, will go the other direction to Sacramento.”

“I'm in no hurry. We got plenny o' salvage work to do here.” Underwood spat over the cliff. The gob caught the wind and rose before spiraling downward to the river. He missed the two men scouring the cliff for silver, who never noticed because they were so busy risking their lives to get just one more bar before climbing back to safety.

“Squinty, me and you'll see these folks back to a spot along the tracks to wait for the train home.”

“Right, boss.” The sharpshooter started to mount, but Underwood stopped him.

“On second thought, you watch them varmints down there. I wouldn't put it past either of them to toss the bars to the river so they could fetch them for themselves later.”

“I'll keep an eye on them.” Squinty chuckled. “Can't do more 'n that since one's all I got left.” He settled on the ledge, his feet dangling over.

“We'll go back, the three of us. Don't you try anything,” Underwood said.

They rode to the tracks, Underwood and Tamara chatting as if they were the best of friends. Slocum still had his six-shooter, but using it on Underwood meant shooting past the woman. Underwood cleverly kept Tamara between them to prevent such a bid for freedom.

“We pitch camp here,” Underwood said. He got down, stretched mightily, and said, “I'm tuckered out. Don't you go nowhere while I take a nap. The sun's nice and warm on these old bones.” He proceeded to unroll his blanket and stretch out, clutching the shotgun as if it were a lover who might sneak away.

Slocum and Tamara looked at each other. She mouthed, “What'll we do?”

Slocum showed her. He walked his horse a hundred yards up the line toward San Francisco. She joined him. They both mounted and started riding before they spoke.

“He let us go,” she said.

“After a crew finds the silver lost down the cliff, he's in the catbird seat. He'll match what Deputy Ford returned.”

“Jackson's is lost because he's dead,” she said. Then she stared hard at Slocum. “Are you thinking what I am?”

“Drury's share is still out there. Where he hid his, being in such feeble condition, is a poser.”

“He might not have been that bad off during the robbery,” Tamara said, her excitement growing. “If he'd just smoked opium, he might have been as strong and alert as any of the others.”

Slocum pushed the mare a little harder to start a long upward slope toward the pass. On the other side was the stretch of railroad where the robbery had occurred. And past the next summit it was all downhill into Oakland. From there taking the ferry from Berkeley to San Francisco was a matter of a few hours.

“He's gone back to San Francisco to get more opium,” Tamara kept on, putting voice to what Slocum had already decided. “We can find him and get him to tell us where he hid his share. In his condition now he's too weak to move it by himself!”

“That's the way I see it,” Slocum said.

*   *   *

It took them until noon the next day to reach San Francisco, and Slocum spent every instant looking over his shoulder, just in case.

“I wish I could ask Underwood where to find him,” Tamara said. She looked around outside the line of saloons and moved closer to Slocum.

“We've only started,” he told her. A saloon wasn't the place to find Drury. Most of the silver had slipped through their fingers, but the opium addict gave them their last chance to get a piece of the stolen shipment. Slocum touched the single silver bar in his pocket he had won from the man in the card game. This might end up being the only profit he saw from getting shot at and almost dying more times than he could count.

“If I go in and—”

“You wouldn't last ten seconds,” he told her. “Not a woman who looks like you.”

“Is that an insult?” She drew herself up and pressed her hand over the hole torn in her blouse. She had tied it together with a small knot that kept coming unfastened. Her fingers pressed into it and the softness beneath.

“Any whore along the Barbary Coast sells herself for a quarter a trick.”

“That's outrageous!”

“What's really outrageous is that her pimp probably gets her doped up on laudanum or drunk off cheap rotgut and then takes the entire night's money. Maybe as much as ten dollars.”

“Ten? That'd mean . . . Oh.” Tamara put her hand over her mouth to stifle the outcry. “I can't expect you to take the risk of going into each saloon and asking after him.”

“He's not here,” Slocum said. The smell of decaying fish and the ocean gagged him. “We need to go to Chinatown.”

“The opium dens,” she said, nodding. “Of course. But it'll be even harder there. I don't speak Chinese, and I am sure you don't.”

Slocum ignored how easily she assumed he spoke no Chinese. That she was right mattered less than finding Drury fast. The robber might have been chasing the dragon for days. A week? It all depended on when he and Baldy had parted company. Baldy had taken it into his head to retrieve his share and hightail it. Drury might have grabbed a few silver bars from his hoard and returned to San Francisco for his drugs. That was the best Slocum could hope for.

“Dupont Gai is that way,” Tamara said, pointing. “I've never been there. There wasn't any reason.”

“Didn't the railroad hire Chinese to lay the tracks through the mountains?”

“Yes, but Mr. Collingswood hired Celestial recruiters. I don't think even Underwood ventured into Chinatown. It's a very dangerous place.”

Slocum turned his back on the Barbary Coast. Chinatown couldn't be any more dangerous, even with rumors of vicious Chinese gangs called tongs and a rabbit warren of tunnels beneath the streets to hide the opium dens and give escape routes when the police raided street-level stores.

They walked south and turned toward the east a mile from the Bay. Dupont Street was crowded with Chinese darting about on arcane business. Decapitated chickens hung by their feet in front of butcher stores and trays of greens attracted crowds, all chattering and pushing money back and forth in deals that defied logic—or any logic Slocum knew.

“How do we find a den of iniquity, John?” She clung to his arm so hard the circulation was cut off.

He steered her into a filthy alley and moved in front of her.

“How are you as an actress?”

“Why, I— Why do you want to know?”

“You're going to be an addict. I'll carry you. Maybe half drag you. I'll ask after your brother and say you want to smoke some opium with him.”

“Drury,” she said. “Do you think it'll work?”

“We don't have any other way of convincing an opium den owner to show us to Drury.”

“There must be dozens.” She inhaled deeply and sucked in what Slocum already had. The distinctive scent of burning opium seeped from the building foundations, hinting at secret subterranean dens. “Do we inquire everywhere?”

Slocum saw no better plan. He unfastened the knot holding her ripped blouse together. It flopped down and exposed her firm, conical breast. She swatted his hand as he reached to touch it. He pushed her hand away and smeared some of the grime from his hand onto it.

“Makes you a bit more decent, even when you're playing indecent.”

“Why, John, don't you remember how indecent I can be? I'll have to show you exactly how indecorous I can be.”

“Later. The silver first.” This put her back on track. She threw her forearm up over her face and pretended to swoon.

Slocum caught her easily, then pulled her upright. It took a few steps for them to work together. When they got back into the street, he defied anyone to believe she wasn't hurting for opium.

More than an hour and six dens later, they came to a door opening onto an alley. Slocum had learned to spot the dens by the burly guards stationed outside. Many carried wickedly sharp hatchets thrust in their sashes. This one wore two butcher knives and swung a meat cleaver back and forth with a faint whistling sound.

Slocum explained what they wanted, how Tamara needed to find her brother.

The man stood as solid as a statue, arms crossed. The gleaming cleaver in his right hand warned them not to try to enter.

“Money. We have money.” Slocum pulled out the silver bar and showed it. The man's eyes widened slightly, then he gave a single nod, rapped on the door, and stood back as it opened.

The rush of smoke and heat from below made Slocum as weak as Tamara pretended. The splintery stairs had been built for lighter men and sagged with every step. When they reached the bottom of the flight, the darkness almost defeated him. Smoke burned his eyes, and only a single lamp burned at the end of a long narrow corridor. He and Tamara walked down it slowly. The passage was too narrow for him to continue supporting her weight. He went ahead of her, and she shuffled along, feigning debilitating need for the drug as well as she could.

“You pay. Now,” said a wizened man who hardly came to Slocum's shoulder. He was hunched over, and his thrust-out hand twitched like a bony claw.

“We're looking for her brother. They will smoke together if he is here. We will pay for more of his opium.
Ya pien
,” Slocum said, mimicking the word he had heard used by other Chinese in the hunt for Drury.

“Madak.
Ya pien
smoke with tobacco. Good. Good. Expensive.” The man thrust his hand out farther.

“We must find—”

“He's here, John! Drury's here!”

Slocum took out the silver bar and placed it in the gatekeeper's hand. It disappeared into the folds of a robe that hung like a tent around a scrawny body.

Slocum knelt beside the bunk where Drury lay, his eyes open and staring sightlessly. His skin had turned to tissue paper, tightly strung over his bones. In his half-open mouth Slocum saw a blackened tongue.

“Where is it, Drury? Tell me where the silver is.” Tamara shook the man. His head flopped from side to side.

Slocum pulled her back. She struggled to get free and force Drury to tell her where his portion from the robbery was hidden.

“He's dead,” Slocum said harshly. “He's not going to tell us anything. From the look of him, he's been dead for a day.”

“But he can't be.”

Slocum swung her around bodily and pushed her back toward the man who had taken the silver. Before Slocum could demand it back, a commotion down the long hall caught his attention. Men shouted in English and rushed forward. The Chinaman tried to duck down under a table. Slocum saw the dark round hole there that would have let the man escape into the maze of tunnels under the streets. As he pulled him up on his toes, kicking and struggling, Underwood pushed past and lifted his shotgun.

The roar deafened Slocum. He fell back as the Celestial seemed to explode when the buckshot tore him apart. Slocum stared at his coat and vest covered with the man's innards and blood.

“You make quite an entry, Underwood.” Slocum tried wiping the gore from his coat. His hands were quickly caked with blood and gore.

“You'da been gutted if I hadn't.” Underwood bent. Using his crippled hand, he scooped up a knife with a long, razor-sharp blade. “He had it aimed right for your heart.”

“I should thank you,” Slocum said.

“But you're not sure you can do it,” Underwood said. “Gus, you find the son of a bitch?”

“Deader 'n a mackerel, boss.”

“Where's the rest of the silver, Slocum?” Underwood tapped the knife on Slocum's shoulder, then slid it closer to his throat. Slocum didn't move a muscle.

“He was dead when we got here,” Tamara said. “That's the truth. Wherever he hid his share, it's still out there.”

“We been scourin' the countryside and ain't found it,” Underwood said. “I was hopin' you'd put me on to it—for the reward, of course.”

“Of course,” Slocum said sarcastically. He felt empty inside after all that had happened.

“Boss, lookee here.” Gus held up the silver bar Slocum had given the opium den owner.

“Now how he'd get that?”

Slocum looked Underwood squarely in the eye and said, “Drury must have paid for his smoke with it.”